1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a magnetic disk drive apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
In a magnetic disk drive apparatus or a hard disk drive (HDD) apparatus, a thin-film magnetic head element for writing magnetic information into and/or reading magnetic information from a magnetic disk or a hard disk is in general formed on a magnetic head slider flying in operation above the rotating magnetic disk. The slider is supported at top end section of a suspension of a head gimbal assembly (HGA).
The HDD apparatus has in general a housing member with an opened top face and a cover member for covering the top face to accommodate inside at least one magnetic disk, a drive motor for rotating the disk, at least one HGA with a magnetic head slider, a suspension and a wiring member, a support arm for supporting the at least one HGA, and an actuator such as a voice coil motor (VCM) for swinging the support arm in a plane parallel to the magnetic disk.
In the conventional HDD apparatus, as disclosed in Japanese patent publication No. 06-215513 A2, these main components such as the magnetic disk, the drive motor, the HGA, the support arm and the VCM are attached to the housing member, but are not attached to the cover member. The cover member is used only for covering the opening of the housing member to seal the HDD apparatus.
In such the conventional HDD apparatus, both the magnetic disk with a recording surface that should be kept free of contamination and the HGA are attached to the housing member side. Therefore, when the HGA has to be replaced due to malfunctions after assembling in the HDD apparatus, it is necessary to pay close attention to prevention of the contamination of the magnetic disk surface.
In the conventional manufacturing process of the HDD apparatus, in general, first the magnetic head slider is attached to the suspension to form an HGA that has a proper size for a worker to easily handle, and then the HGA is assembled in the HDD apparatus by the worker. Thus, a thin-film magnetic head element formed on the slider is sometimes destroyed by electrostatic discharge (ESD). Thus, in case that the thin-film magnetic head element of the slider is a magnetoresistive effect (MR) element, particularly, a giant magnetoresistive effect (GMR) element or a tunneling magnetoresistive effect (TMR) element, it must give special consideration to the prevention of possible ESD destruction.
In order to solve the aforementioned problems in the conventional HDD apparatus, the applicants have already proposed an HDD apparatus having a housing member, a cover member fixed to the housing member for covering its opened face, an HGA including a magnetic head slider and a suspension for supporting the magnetic head slider, a support arm for supporting the HGA, a magnetic disk and a motor for rotating the magnetic disk, wherein the magnetic disk and the motor are attached to the housing member and the support arm is attached to the cover member. This proposed HDD apparatus is not known in public at filing of this application.
In case that the magnetic disk and the motor are mounted on the housing member and main components except for these are mounted on the cover member, because wiring to the motor that is attached to the housing member and wirings to the VCM and the magnetic head slider that are attached to the cover member are connected to a single connector for external connection via flexible print circuits (FPCs), it is impossible to completely separate the housing member and the cover member.
Thus, it is very difficult to replace only the HGA without inducing contamination of the magnetic disk surface after assembling the HGA into the HDD apparatus.